NEWARK, N.J. — Maybe this was an outlier; a strange sort of game on soft and chippy ice, with two teams trying to figure out just what the hell they’re in for. The Stanley Cup final can be like altitude; it can take time to adjust. Maybe by the time Game 2 rolls around, the fight will start for real.

But if the essential tenor of Game 1 of the Stanley Cup is any indication, this could be a long and harrowing series for the teams involved. It was a game of duelling pushes and an exchange of near-misses; it was a game that just sat there while moving back and forth, waiting for a bounce, for the residue of design, all the way into overtime.

“It’s pretty evenly matched teams,” said Kings coach Darryl Sutter. “Probably going to be more than one overtime goal.”

It was Los Angeles that got the overtime goal in a 2-1 win over the New Jersey Devils, and the winner was a combination of a mistake and surpassing skill. Devils defenceman Marek Zidlicky pinched at the blue line, Dainius Zubrus’s legs wouldn’t move, and suddenly the deadly Anze Kopitar was sent away alone by Justin Williams, who made a half-blind pass and hoped for the best. Kings captain Dustin Brown watched him go, and said afterwards, “If there’s a guy I want to take a breakaway, it’s Kopi.”

Indeed, Kopitar tied Martin Brodeur into a 40-year-old knot and slid a forehand home like a dagger at the 8:13 mark of overtime. It could have gone either way; it did.

[np-related]

“Every series has got its own story, but we just need to keep going,” said Brodeur, who made 23 saves. “You could tell that we were a little nervous, in the first period, in the way that we played. I thought we settled in pretty good after that, and it was a little chess match, who’s going to make the mistake, and we made the bigger one.”

The ice was bad, and for most of two periods, the Kings were better. Los Angeles scored first, on a turnover forced by its fourth line, and Colin Fraser put a shot between Brodeur’s pads, 9:56 in; it could have been 2-0 about another half a dozen times, just as David Clarkson could have tied it for New Jersey, but instead sailed a puck over an egregiously open net.

“We didn’t put the puck in the right places,“ said Devils winger Ilya Kovalchuk, who looked sluggish. “The puck was bouncing all over the place.”

The Devils went nearly 15 minutes without registering a shot on goal in the second, but finally scored with 1:12 left in the period on an Anton Volchenkov shot that bounced off goaltender Jonathan Quick and defenceman Slava Voynov, and it became a kid’s game: next goal wins.

And oh, there were chances. Four minutes into the third the Devils came achingly close to tying the score, as a bouncing shot deflected into open space with Quick out of position, but Zach Parise could just get a tiny piece of the heel of his stick on it; Quick, diving, saved it, and it rattled around until Parise, in desperation, tried to glove the puck in. Travis Zajac’s stick jabbed near where the puck had been a second later; nobody knows if it would have meant a goal. Midway through the period, Devils defenceman Mark Fayne fanned on a puck bouncing past an open net; having great hands is not his job, and he said the puck just would not sit on the ice. Still, those kinds of plays can haunt a man.

“All losses at this time of the year are really hard to take, because your dream is slowly shutting down,” said Brodeur.

The Devils have now lost the opening game of three straight series, but as Brodeur pointed out, “We got shut down by [Henrik] Lundqvist in Game 1 [of the Eastern Conference final against the New York Rangers]; we came back pretty strong.” Well, Game 2 is Saturday, against a Kings team that has won nine straight playoff road games, and has become a juggernaut. Welcome to the altitude, everybody. Whoever breathes best wins.

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